TCU Texas Book Award
Previous Winners
| Year presented |
Winner |
| 2007 | Timothy Egan, The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl |
| 2005 | Scot Zesch, The Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier |
| 2003 | Jeff Guinn, Our Land Before We Die: The Proud Story of the Seminole Negro |
| 2001 | Stephen Harrigan, Gates of the Alamo |
Timothy Egan, winner of the 4th biennial TCU Texas Book Award for The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, will speak and accept his $5000 award at a Friends of the TCU Library banquet on April 17, 2007, at the Kelly Center on the TCU campus. The public is invited to the banquet. For more information, please call (817) 257-6109. The TCU Texas Book Award is jointly sponsored by the Friends of the TCU Library and TCU Press.
The Worst Hard Time is also the recipient of the 2006 National Book Award for non-fiction, the Oklahoma Book Award and the Western Heritage (Wrangler) Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. Publishers Weekly described the book as a "visceral account how America's great, grassy plains turned to dust" and The New Yorker as "portraits as sobering and far less familiar than those of the 'exodusters' who staggered out of the Great Plains." Amazon's website commentaries include "Best of the books I read during this past year" and "This is a book that you simply cannot put down. It is a masterpiece."
For 15 years Egan has been an enterprise reporter for The New York Times with articles featured in the Sunday weekly review and travel sections. In 2001 he shared in a Pulitzer Prize for a pioneering series exploring race in contemporary America. His other books include a northwest classic, The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest, and Lasso the Wind: Away To the West, winner of the 1999 Governor's Writing Award for Washington State and a New York Time Notable Book of the Year. His well-received novel The Winemaker's Daughter reflects not only his growing up in the northwest but also a year spent in Italy with his wife and children. Mr. Egan also is a featured radio essayist for the BBC.
Mr. Egan and his family make their home in the Seattle area.
About the Award
The Friends of the TCU Library and TCU Press co-sponsor the TCU Texas Book Award, a prize of $5,000 given to the author of the best book about Texas. Fiction, nonfiction, art and photography books, and others will be considered; juvenile and young-adult works are excluded, as are dramatic works.
The award: The presentation of $5,000 and a certificate will be made at a banquet in Fort Worth in spring 2007. The author of the winning title will attend and deliver remarks.
For more information:
Barbara Standlee
TCU Library, Box 298400
Fort Worth, TX 76129
Ph: 817.257.6109
email: b.standlee@tcu.edu